APS News

July 1996 (Volume 5, Number 7)

General Election Preview: Members To Choose New Leadership for 1997

The membership of The American Physical Society will elect a Vice President, a Chair-Elect of the Nominating Committee, and four General Councillors in the 1997 General Election. Ballots must be received by the 8 September deadline in order to be valid. A slate of candidates has been prepared by the Nominating Committee, and biographical summaries for each are provided below. Full biographical information and candidates' statements are printed in the ballot.

FOR VICE PRESIDENT

friedmanJerome I. Friedman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friedman received his Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University in Chicago in 1956. After a year as a research associate there, he accepted a three-year appointment at Stanford University. In 1960, he joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor, where he has served as director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and as head of the physics department. His research has included studies of particle structure and interactions with high-energy electrons, neutrinos and hadrons. Recipient of the Society's W.H.K. Panofsky Prize in 1989, he shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor. Friedman's professional activities include service as vice-chair of the Board of the University Research Association, and on the National Research Council's Board on Physics and Astronomy, as well as the APS Physics Planning Committee.

schrammDavid N. Schramm
University of Chicago

Schramm received his S.B. from MIT in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1971 from Caltech, where he remained as a postdoctoral fellow for the following year. After a two-year stint as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he is currently the Louis Block Professor of Physical Sciences. He chaired the department from 1979 to 1985, and in 1995 became vice president for research, with responsibilities at Argonne National Laboratory as well as the university. He also co-founded the astrophysics group at Fermilab. His research has included numerous topics in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology, as well as the interface of these subjects with nuclear and elementary particle physics. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the 1993 APS Lilienfeld Prize. Schramm currently chairs the NRC's Board on Physics and Astronomy.

FOR CHAIR-ELECT OF THE NOMINATING COMMITTEE

haxtonWick Haxton
University of Washington

Haxton received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1976. He spent 1977 as a research associate at the Universitt Mainz followed by seven years as a research associate, Oppenheimer Fellow, and staff member in the Theory Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He spent one year as an assistant professor at Purdue University (1980-81), and returned to teaching in 1984 at the University of Washington, where he is currently a professor of physics and director of the Institute for Nuclear Theory. His research interests include atomic and nuclear tests of symmetry principles and conservation laws, nuclear astrophysics issues, and many-body techniques. Haxton chaired the Division of Nuclear Physics in 1992 and currently chairs the Division of Astrophysics. He is currently an editor of Physics Letters B and is a former General Councillor.

John W. Wilkins
Ohio State University

A University of Illinois Ph.D., Wilkins joined the Cornell University physics department in 1964 after a year-long postdoc at Cambridge University. He was traded for a draft choice in 1988 to Ohio State University. Only with the assistance of over 70 graduate students and postdocs, could he have rambled from superconductors to metals to semiconductors, sampling many excitations processes by single-particle and many-body paths. Within the APS his primary concern has been publications with service both on Reviews of Modern Physics, Physical Review B and Physical Review Letters and in the oversight and review of APS journals. But he also had to endure a term on both the Council and the Executive Board. Unbelievably he is a founding member of the Division of Biological Physics, a field in which he has never worked.

FOR GENERAL COUNCILLOR

awschalDavid D. Awschalom
University of California, Santa Barbara

Awschalom received his Ph.D. in experimental physics from Cornell University, and was a research staff member and manager of the Nonequilibrium Physics Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. In 1991 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a professor of physics, where he is also a member and program coordinator for magnetism and superconductivity in the Science and Technology Center for Quantized Electronic Structures. His research interests center on exploring electronic and magnetic interactions in semiconductor quantum structures, as well as the classical and quantum mechanical properties of mesoscopic magnetic systems.

ballJames Ball
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Ball received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1958, joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a postdoctoral associate that same year, and soon became a permanent staff member. He has remained at ORNL for most of his career, serving as director of the Holifield Heavy Ion Facility until 1983, when he was named director of the Physics Division. His primary research interests are in nuclear structure with direct reactions, two-nucleon transfer reactions, heavy ion reaction mechanisms, shell model treatment of the A=90 region of nuclei, and accelerator physics. A former chair of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics, he also served three years as the general program chair for the APS/AAPT Joint Meeting.

gatesS. James Gates
University of Maryland

Gates received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1977, and spent the next three years doing postgraduate research as a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He spent two years on the faculty of MIT's mathematics department before joining the physics department of the University of Maryland at College Park. His research centers on investigations of the mathematical properties and realizations of supersymmetry in quantum and classical theories of particles, fields and strings, and co-authored Superspace, the first advanced comprehensive book on supersymmetry. Gates was the first director of the NASA-supported Center for the Study of Terrestrial and extra-Terrestrial Atmospheres, and was the recipient of the first APS Edward Bouchet Award.

peercyPaul S. Peercy
SEMI/SemaTech

Peercy received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1966, and spent the next two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories. In 1968 he joined Sandia National Laboratories, performing research in such solid state physics areas as plasma in solids, inelastic light scatting in solids, phase transformations and ferroelectricity, and semiconductor physics. Most recently he served as Sandia's director of microelectronics and photonics, with responsibility for its silicon, compound semiconductor, sensor and packaging R&D activities. In August 1995 he left Sandia to assume the presidency of SEMI/SemaTech, a consortium of more than 200 companies that provide the U.S. equipment and materials supplier base for the semiconductor device manufacturing industry.

quiggChris Quigg
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Quigg received his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970, and spent the next four years as a member of SUNY-Stony Brook's Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 1974 he has been associated with Fermilab, heading the Theoretical Physics Department from 1977 to 1987. Until 1991, he was also on the faculty of the University of Chicago. His research emphasizes the essential interplay between theory and experimentation, including such topics as electroweak symmetry breaking, properties and interactions of heavy quarks, and high-energy particle collisions. Quigg has served on the executive committee of the APS Division of Particles and Fields, and as an associate editor for both Physical Review Letters and Reviews of Modern Physics.

sudanRavi Sudan
Cornell University

Sudan received his Ph.D. from Imperial College at the University of London. After working a few years in England and India in industry, he joined the faculty of Cornell University where he is the IBM Professor of Engineering, and member of both the electrical engineering and applied physics departments. From 1975 to 1985 he served as director of the Laboratory of Plasma Studies and helped to establish the Cornell Theory and Supercomputer Center, serving as its first deputy director. His research spans all aspects of plasma physics, including thermonuclear fusion and the technology of high-powered charged particle beams. Recipient of the 1989 APS Maxwell Prize, Sudan has served on the executive committee of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, and currently chairs the National Research Council's Plasma Science Committee.

trimbleVirginia Trimble
University of Maryland/University of California, Irvine

Trimble received her Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1968, and presently divides her time between the physics department of the University of California, Irvine and the astronomy department of the University of Maryland. Her early research focused on advanced stages of star evolution, including white dwarfs, supernovae and pulsars. More recently she has investigated the statistical distributions of properties of binary stars and numerous topics in the history and sociology of physics and astronomy. She has served as secretary-treasurer of the APS Division of Astrophysics, and on the APS Committee on Meetings.

saulanwuSau Lan Wu
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Wu received her Ph.D. in high energy physics from Harvard University in 1970 and did her postdoctoral study at MIT. She participated in the 1974 discovery of the charm quark at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where she had previously spent a summer as an undergraduate student. She has been a faculty member in the physics department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison since 1977. She is a co-recipient of the European Physical Society's 1995 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize for the first direct observation of the gluon. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wu is also a member of the DOE's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel.

©1995 - 2024, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Barrett H. Ripin

July 1996 (Volume 5, Number 7)

APS News Home

Issue Table of Contents

APS News Archives

Contact APS News Editor


Articles in this Issue
Highlights from Indianapolis: Trapped Francium, Energy Alternatives, Age of the Universe, Gender Gap
Scientists Trap Rarest Element - Francium
APS E-print Server Running
Technological Advances May Revolutionize Medical Imaging
Two New APS Topical Groups
Fighting the Gender Gap:Standardized Tests Are Poor Indicators of Ability in Physics
Over 100 New Isotopes Discovered with Novel Fission Method
Particle Beam Processing Industrial Applications
APS Council Approves Three Statements on Energy Issues
Science Policy, Black Holes and BEC Featured at Plenary Session
New Cluster Data Puts Universe at 13 Billion Years
Stockpile Stewardship, Non-Proliferation Policies Pose Challenges to Nuclear Weapons Labs
Energy Alternatives Vital To Meet Future Demands
Multimedia Review
General Election Preview: Members To Choose New Leadership for 1997
In Brief
Now Appearing in RMP....
Letters
APS Views
The Back Page
Cartoon
Historical Factoid